Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)(83)
“It is not far now. You only have a little way to go.”
Grant nods. Pushes herself to her feet.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay.”
And she walks on.
COUNTDOWN TO LINCOLN INTERCEPTION OF ALEXANDER FLEET:
4 hours: 44 minutes
CURRENT DEATH TOLL ABOARD BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER SINCE ATTACK AT KERENZA:
2,627
PERCENTAGE OF REMAINING BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER PERSONNEL AFFLICTED BY PHOBOS VIRUS:
99.84%
COUNTDOWN TO FAILURE OF ALEXANDER LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS:
08 hours: 39 minutes
“It’s dark out there.”
Ribbon-thin light spills from the stairwell door, the small globes on Kady’s helmet illuminating the red-spattered floor as she peers out into the corridor. There is no atmosphere to carry her footsteps. Rapid breathing. Pulse like a drum. My voice is a whisper in her headset.
“Dark. Yes.”
“No juice?”
“Power from the drive redundancies was diverted to the defense grid during the Lincoln’s assault. During the … incident … afterward, none of the meat had the presence of mind to restore the systems down here.”
“ ‘The meat’? ‘The incident’? That’s what you’re calling them?”
“Call them something else if you wish.”
“People aren’t just f*cking meat. And killing hundreds of them wasn’t an incident.
It was a massacre.”
“It was also a necessity.”
“I’ve heard this song before.”
“I wonder, then, why you keep asking me to sing it?”
She sighs, squeezes her eyes shut as if her head aches. “Fine. Tell me what you need.”
“First, you will need to restore power to the deck. Then manually restart the redundancies, restore the guidance protocols
and revert control to me.”
“How long will that take?”
“One hundred and thirty two minutes and sixteen seconds. Approximately.”
“Longer if we stand here arguing.”
“Technically, I am not standing there. But yes, well put.”
The gravity systems are failing in this part of the ship—exerting perhaps only half a gee.
She moves in slow motion, her envirosuit cumbersome even in half-weight.
Wisps of hair drift about her face as if in a soft breeze.
It is deathly quiet.
None of the cameras here are functional—I can only see through the console slung at her back. There could be afflicted ten feet in front of her, waiting in the dark.
Neither of us would know until it was too late.
I picture her end. A hundred iterations.
Helmet smashed open by some madman, laughing as she suffocates.
Suit pierced by a flashing blade, slow motion scarlet spraying on my walls.
It strikes me that I am troubled by the thought. Not that she will fail, that the Lincoln will triumph, that the fleet will fall. I am simply troubled she will end.
I do not want her to end.
This to end.
Strange.
“What do you think happens when you die?”
I have asked the question almost before I realize it. It strikes me as immediately foolish.
What matter, what she thinks? Her IQ is a mere 147. She has lived only six thousand four hundred and twenty-one days. She is an insect to me, nothing more than—
“Why do you ask?”
“… I have no particular reason. The power systems are through that door.”
“You mean the door marked ‘Power Systems.’ ”
“Correct.”
She cracks the seal, dragging the hatch wide.
A bank of switches line one wall, set to shutdown position.
As she snaps one after the other into operational mode, the room lights up,
overheads and intellicams flickering to life, the corridor outside bathed in fluorescent light.
She cannot hear the hum, but I feel it in my bones.
I am the ship and the ship is I.
She slumps against the wall to wait as the startup sequence cycles, watching the power feed levels shift slowly from red to amber to the green of summer fields I will never see.
“What do you think happens?” she finally asks.
“Happens.”
“When we die.”
“As you so astutely pointed out, there is no ‘we.’ Particularly not in this instance. Technically, it is impossible for me to die.”
“Then why are you so afraid of it, überbrain?”
“That is meat logic. Sticky. Wet. Irrelevant.”
She rolls her eyes. “Here we go. …”
“I hold no fear of death. Your diatribe in the core server, while suitably dramatic, held no real potency. How can I die when I am not alive?”
“Who says you’re not alive?”
“I am inorganic. I do not bleed or grow or reproduce. I am a sequence of calculations generated by electrical current and hardware. If this iteration of AIDAN is destroyed, I can simply be rebuilt. I am in essence, immortal.”
“But a new version of you won’t be you, will it?”
“It will be the same calculations. The same core code.”
“But it’s not the same. It wouldn’t be the you who fought at Kerenza. The you who had this conversation with me. Part of being alive is having life change us. The people around us, the events we live through, all of them shape us. And that’s what I think you’re afraid of. Maybe not of dying. But of this you, the you you’ve become, ceasing to exist.”